SHRUBBERY WORDS

If you aren't famililar with the Las Colinas area where I live, at a major intersection there's a large clock built into an embankment, landscaped with surrounding shrubbery. The shrubbery has been pruned to spell out:

I walked by the other day and wondered what the shrubbery would spell if left to its natural growth ...

QUOTE ON WORDS

ROCKER WORDS, 'RACIST' WORDS?

The house is still rockin' over the rollicking reactions to Atlanta Braves' pitcher John Rocker's recent 'racist' comments in Sports Illustrated. In case you missed it, here are some of the more repeated quotes straight from my copy of the magazine:

So many dumb asses don't know how to drive in this town [Atlanta]. They turn from the wrong lane. They go 20 miles per hour. It makes me want -- Look! Look at this idiot! I guarantee you she's a Japanese woman. How bad are Asian women at driving?" (The woman driving was white.)

When asked about the possibility of playing for a New York team: Imagine having to take the 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you're in Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing.

The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. I'm not a very big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get into this country?

Asked about another sports 'bad boy', Latrell Sprewell - the notorious basketball player who choked his coach last year - That guy should've been arrested, and instead he's playing basketball. Why do you think that is? Do you think if Keith Van Horn - if he was white - they'd let him back? No way.

During the interview, "in passing, he calls an overweight teammate 'a fat monkey'".

On New York Mets fans, with whom he has a running verbal, visual, and sometimes battery-throwing, beer-sloshing, battle: Nowhere else in the country do people spit at you, throw bottles at you, throw batteries at you and say, 'Hey, I did your mother last night - she's a whore.' I talked about what degenerates they were, and they proved me right. Just by saying something, I could make them mad enough to go home and slap their moms.

I'm not a racist or prejudiced person. But certain people bother me.

For these and other comments, Rocker commanded attention approaching the absurd, including an audience with home run king and Braves' front office executive Hank Aaron, former Secretary to the UN Andrew Young, and the head of Atlanta's NAACP. Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, has ordered Rocker to undergo psychiatric examination before determining his universally-expected punishment.

Now, I certainly don't want to be perceived as an apologist for Rocker, either for his words or his actions. However, I believe it's appropriate for discriminating individuals to spend some time considering not what Rocker said, but how have people reacted to what he said?

Some reactions I've considered:

• Compare the publicity generated by public persona Rocker's comments, vs. those expressed by South Carolina state senator Arthur Ravenel in the Confederate flag article mentioned above:

  "Can you believe that there are those who think that the General Assembly of South Carolina is going to ... knuckle under, roll over and do the bidding of 'that organization known as the National Association for Retarded People?'"

  Are the public reactions proportional to the two quoted comments?
• Is someone who verbalizes his/her thoughts and opinions more worthy of condemnation than someone who holds similar sentiments but remains silent?
• What does it mean to "be a racist"? Is it a function of what is said? Of what is felt, or thought, or believed? Or is it based on actions? What defines the boundaries for this label?
• What differences does it make if Rocker, or anyone else, declares himself to be, or not to be, a 'racist'? What would you expect in either case?
• Some people have felt that it's a virtue to be a 'stand-up guy', to state what's on your mind, to "tell it like it is". Remember how former Green Bay Packer defensive lineman-turned-preacher, Reggie White, righteously lambasted gays last year? Both Rocker and White expressed some comments which, accepted at face value, reflected strongly-felt emotions. Did anybody publicly suggest Reggie White should receive psychiatric examination?

Perhaps some attention, and spotlight, needs to shine on those people who can be so easily manipulated by someone's mere words.

I also find it worthwhile to ponder a statement made by computer-industry observer, journalist and PBS commentator Bob Cringely. In his January 13th column, Cringely relates how he was contacted by a producer from ABC's "Nightline" to provide his reaction to the AOL/Time Warner deal:

Whenever such a call comes in from "Nightline" or CNN or any of the other news shows where I appear from time to time, there is a kind of audition that takes place on the telephone. They want to know in advance what I will say on the air. Part of this audition is the producer (producers in this case) needing some quick education about what is going on, and part is their wanting to make sure that I am going to not only be interesting, but that I will say what they want to hear.

SHIP WORDS

Sign observed by yours truly at The Shipyard brew pub in the Orlando International Airport:

And I bought Stacy the t-shirt: Ship Happens

AND FINALLY - CIDER HOUSE WORDS

I saw the latest movie based on a John Irving novel, "The Cider House Rules". I never finished the book, but I'm a big fan of Irving's previous novels such as The World According to Garp and Hotel New Hampshire. The movie received some favorable pre-release publicity, and since Irving himself wrote the screenplay, I decided to see it.

I heartily recommend it, if your heart and brain are up to the challenge. I found some of it gut-wrenching, some of it tear-jerking, a lot of it thought-provoking, and all of it well worth the time and cost of a ticket.

I won't go into the unusual story or how the title fits, but I do hope that the term 'cider house rules' will grow into the daily lexicon of usage such as Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22' did. Here's my impression of a definition for cider house rules:

Rules written by someone to whom the rules do not apply; rules written without consideration for those to whom the rules do apply; rules ignored by all; and yet, rules which remain 'rules'.